


Woof

by morrezela



Category: CW Network RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Animal Transformation, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 05:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen's life was changed the day that he was turned into a Dalmatian by a reality television star.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Woof

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: References to dog abuse, puppy mills and taking advantage of the homeless.
> 
> This was my 2012 j2_everafter fill. My chosen film was 101 Dalmatians. Beta was performed by peppervl. 
> 
> All mistakes you find are my own as I liked to muck around with things.

Once upon a time, Jensen Ackles didn’t bark.

At least, he didn’t bark except for those times that his baby sister begged him to read her a bedtime story because he was so much better at it than anybody else since he’d do the voices, and he was her, “Most favoritest brother ever, Jenny!”

But really, that was years ago, and his sister was into boys now, so that didn’t factor into the whole not barking thing. It was a childhood thing, and Jensen was a man now.

Or had been a man and was now a dog thanks to one reality television star named Kruella Deville. Kruella was a rich, pampered daughter of a famous couple who had long ago gone to Splitsville as the show was called. She had a good deal of screen time covering her poor little rich girl angst over which family to spend her multiple vacations with, and the highest rated episode of the series was a cliffhanger where she had to actually choose between going to Vale or Boulder for her winter ski trip because Mommy and Daddy were taking their, much younger, arm candy to different lodges.

Kruella’s wedding to her famous, but not equally famous husband, Avant-garde fashion designer Mr. Deville, was broadcast on three different television stations, and if Jensen hadn’t hated reality television by then, her overly chirpy voice and nasal tone would’ve sealed the deal. It was a crime against nature to allow her and her over done make-up and “clothing” line to be shown to America’s citizens, but somehow her show kept getting renewed.

Normally, Jensen wouldn’t have cared. He hated reality television in general, but he knew better than to buck the trend of a money making scheme. Sure it took away from the roles and opportunities that actual, talented people might be exploring if that kind of mindless trash wasn’t on and original programming was in its place, but the networks were there to make money. Without money nobody would be broadcasting anything, and Jensen knew better than to say anything against a cash cow.

At least, he did normally, but the leggings and miniskirt combination that Kruella was wearing at the charity party really did make her look like a cow and not the cash kind. Jensen maintained that she looked that way because her dress was made of actual cowhide done up with neon strips of glittery whipcord stitching. It was fashion road kill, and yet Kruella was still getting photographed from every angle. The press was having their usual love affair with her, and nobody should have heard him mock the gushing fashion magazine reporter when she said that Kruella looked, “Fierce, like a wild animal.”

Nobody should’ve overheard Jensen’s muttered, “If you call a Holstein a wild animal,” except for Steve, and he knew that Steve didn’t sell him out. Steve needed him to play roadie, and getting Jensen into the Hollywood events that he got hired to play at was far cheaper than hiring some schlep off the street who would end up stealing Steve’s amp or something.

And yes, it didn’t hurt that Jensen could harmonize for Steve when Steve felt that his song set needed that nice, extra bit of vocalization, but Jensen knew that he was just there for his muscles. It wasn’t that much different from auditioning, except for the fact that Steve could care less about Jensen’s appearance. He just wanted Jensen to not drop his precious instruments, so muscles were a big plus for their utilitarian nature and not so much for how good they made Jensen’s shirt look.

But that was before Jensen quit talking and started barking.

It seemed that somebody told another somebody who told Kruella about the Holstein comment, and the next thing that Jensen knew, he was being assaulted by a petite brunette spraying some god-awful smelling thing in his face, dousing him with something sparkly and calling him a, “Real bitch, ya know?”

At first Jensen thought that the spoiled princess was hosing him down with her nasty personal perfume brand and tossing her cheaply made body glitter at him, but that idea went out the window when he started barking at her instead of yelling at her for attacking him.

It was a tossup as to who was more startled, him or Steve. It certainly wasn’t Kruella, she just cackled in that annoying, nasal voice of hers as she walked away, and Jensen had the unpleasant realization that her voice was even worse when processed through dog ears.

It was the single, most horrible thing that had ever happened to Jensen and that included the day that he realized that his dick swung both ways right in the middle of junior high gym class.

The only good thing was that he was playing roadie for Steve and not Chris. Steve was a pretty mellow guy, but a touch on the control freak side for the artsy kind. Because of those conflicting traits, he was completely capable of planning for the unforeseen at a moment’s notice without getting too worked up over it.

Which basically meant that Steve stared at him for about fifteen minutes with a glazed over look on his face before going to bring the truck around to the front without saying a damned word.

Chris would’ve started hitting things. There would have been bloodshed.

And although Jensen would’ve appreciated the sentiment, he also wouldn’t have had anywhere to go because Chris would’ve gotten arrested and then possibly put into the psych ward for rambling about his friend getting turned into a dog. A spotted dog. A fucking Dalmatian, and it was only the thought that he could’ve been turned into a poodle or something equally as floofy that kept Jensen from losing his shit.

Still, it sucked on epic levels that he was now reliant on Steve for everything. Steve was a nice guy, a great guy, even if he was maybe just a touch too anal about certain things in his life.

Like, say, not letting Jensen have any of the whisky that Steve got himself blasted on the instant that his beloved guitar was safely stashed away inside of his apartment. He mumbled something about alcohol not being for dogs and then started laughing hysterically before he drowned himself in the booze that he had on hand.

The only justice in the world was that Jensen could hear just exactly how sick Steve’s hangover made him the next morning. Dog hearing was still not cool, but it was oddly satisfying to hear the war that Steve’s innards were waging on him.

The smell wasn’t too bad, which was Jensen’s first clue that his myopia hadn’t transferred to his doggy vision. It made sense in a weird way. Dogs didn’t have great eyesight to begin with. They relied on their sense of smell and their hearing to tell them about their surroundings. Whatever the mojo was that had transformed him, it seemed to have rearranged his senses and their limitations to have the same sort of impacts on his canine form as they did on his human one. Jensen’s hearing was awesome, but everything pretty much smelled the exact same way that it always had. His sight, with the exception of the color blindness, was actually a bit better than it was without his contacts in.

As far as Jensen was concerned, this was a good thing. Steve might be meticulous about how in tune his guitars were, but he wasn’t so Johnny on the spot with his laundry. He was a big proponent of re-wearing his jeans and shirts and selling it as an attempt to go green when it was really just typical, single man laziness.

In any case, after Steve was done making tribute to the porcelain throne, he dragged his sorry hide over to the computer where he and Jensen fumbled around with their research. Well, Steve fumbled. Jensen more or less loomed over his shoulder like a big, old spotted creeper.

Apparently it was perfectly normal for Jensen’s coat to have brown spots instead of black, and his eyes were okay to be blue. Steve took a moment to assure him that it was very pretty, and Jensen nipped at him in retaliation.

There was a horribly embarrassing period of four minutes where Steve worried that Jensen might go deaf because that was a problem with Dalmatians, and how could Jensen ever cope if he couldn’t hear music again, and all of everything would be dark and bleak – and basically Steve projected his fears on to Jensen before he turned around to hastily scribble a song idea down on the back of a Victoria’s Secret magazine.

Jensen didn’t even want to know why Steve had one of those lying around, but he was a dog, so mocking his friend was out of the question.

Steve’s research into mystical magic that could turn a person into a dog yielded a bunch of websites that were entirely unhelpful and sometimes mildly scarring to the viewer. In the end the most applicable bit of information that Steve could dig up was The Shaggy Dog, and while Jensen doubted that a Disney film was really going to help their situation, Steve went and rented both the original version and the much worse Tim Allen remake.

Then, because he was more of an asshole and probably smarter than Jensen gave him credit for, Steve also rented an entire season of The Dog Whisperer. It was hardly the kind of role that Jensen had imagined himself prepping for when he flew out to Hollywood, but if he was going to be stuck in a dog’s body, he might as well learn how to pretend to be one.

He refused to use the outside world as his toilet. Jensen could live with being virtually naked with all of his spots on display, but he refused to pee on the grass let alone do anything else. That was something that drunken frat boys did, or drunken Texas boys who didn’t want their mothers to smell the alcohol on their breath after they’d supposedly been out at the movies.

The point was that Jensen still had all his marbles, so he figured out how to use Steve’s bathroom in as normal of a way as possible. And that was also how he figured out that ‘bitch’ wasn’t just an insult that had been hurled at him.

“Sorry, man, just sorry,” was what Steve had told him after Jensen had trotted out of the bathroom with his skinny Dalmatian tail tucked between his legs.

Jensen had growled at Steve in response.

Of course, neither Jensen’s sudden disappearance nor his reappearance as a dog was going to go completely unnoticed. Human Jensen, the little-known actor, made the news as a footnote between a school policy protest and the sports. The police came to talk to Steve about Jensen’s disappearance, but as it was clear that the only thing that Steve had carted out of the party that night was his own equipment, they left him alone after a perfunctory questioning.

That left Steve to explain why the hell he’d gotten a dog. Because he was Steve and couldn’t come up with something that wasn’t heart touching and all musician-y, he told all of their mutual friends that he was thinking about how fragile life was and how he could give back. With Jensen going missing, he just had to express that by adopting a dog that he could take care of and sing with and appreciate as a tribute to the memory of his dear friend.

The whole sob story kind of made Jensen want to vomit, but he figured that throwing up on purpose might make Steve start to feed him expensive dog food instead of the human food that Jensen had held out for when his friend got it into his head that Jensen, being a dog, should eat dog things to keep him healthy.

Jensen didn’t win on the trip to the veterinary clinic though. Steve insisted that Jensen get all of his shots and doggy vaccinations and even though Jensen knew better than to do some of the outright disgusting things that canines do, he still had to choke down the heartworm pills every month.

The vet had held a very serious discussion with Steve about how Jensen was genetically deformed, and well, he was sad to say that Steve’s beautiful girl was more of a boy on the inside. Jensen had never heard such wonderful news in his life.

With Jensen being his dog and all, Steve had to name him, and Jensen understood that. He just thought that Jennita was the worst name ever. Jensen was embarrassed for Steve because the man was oblivious about it. He was in what Jensen liked to call his "Spanish mode," singing about piñatas and listening to old José Feliciano albums, and decided that the proper way to pay homage to Jensen’s real name and still have it sound feminine and dog-like was to add ‘nita’ to the end of it.

It made Jensen doubt his taste in friends for a moment, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Plus, Steve was basically paying for his existence what with the lack of Jensen being able to do anything but laze about looking pretty.

Then, then Steve figured out that Jensen was the best dog ever for commercials and photography work. He started dragging Jensen to doggy auditions, and while it wasn’t the glamorous film career that Jensen had once imagined, he actually got seen and booked far more than he ever did as a human.

It helped pay the rent and it upgraded the quality of the beef that Steve bought him, so he couldn’t complain too much.

When it came to exercising, Jensen was completely, utterly fine with Steve just turning on the treadmill in his apartment and letting Jensen doggy power walk on it. It was Steve, beach bum, California Steve, who was the problem.

He liked to go running on the beach with his stupid, golden locks flowing in the breeze, tanning his stupid, hairless chest and flirting with all the pretty girls in their bikinis who thought that he had the prettiest dog, and could they pet her? And of course Jensen had to go along with the plan because he was still basically living off of Steve’s goodwill. He’d never been groped so many times in his life, and he’d been a model for God’s sake.

Plus, sand in his paws was very irritating. It made Jensen want to dig into the offending, soft stuff and snuffle his useless sniffer into it to look for gold or bones or something. It was a disturbingly dog-like impulse, and he disliked it intensely. Communicating that to his buddy was a lost cause, so he just obediently trotted along and stared devotedly at his friend whenever they came to a stop.

Other dogs gave them a fairly wide berth. Whatever Jensen was, they clearly knew that he wasn’t a real pooch. That suited him just fine. He liked dogs well enough, thought they were cool and fun to play with, but that was when he was in possession of his thumbs. Jensen had no interest in butt sniffing or posturing or creating pack structures, and the true canines that surrounded him seemed to get that.

So it was a surprise when one day, while Steve was taking his ever-loving time strolling along the beach, enjoying the California sun, that they were suddenly plowed into by the world’s largest Dalmatian and sent hurtling into the water. The fool thing was wagging its tail like no tomorrow and barking its head off.

He was dragging a petite brunette behind him, and she was screeching out her apologies over the crashing of the waves while her dog seemed intent on gazing at Jensen with deep, soulful puppy dog eyes. It was mildly horrifying, so Jensen gave up on helping Steve regain his footing and made a break for it.

Unfortunately, the moose of a Dalmatian followed him with urgent whines and manic butt wiggling. A small part of Jensen’s brain wondered if maybe the dog was part Great Dane because he was that humongous, but as the tiny woman apologized to Steve for her out of control dog and his behavior, Jensen was forced to think of other topics that weren’t the Dalmatian’s suspicious heritage.

He had to think about how that was not a good expression to see on Steve’s face because it was totally his smitten look. He was looking at the tiny woman like her dog was looking at Jensen, and the disaster looming in front of him couldn’t be any clearer if it was etched out in the sand on the beach.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Sophia, Sophia, Sophia,” Steve sang as he danced around the living room with his guitar.

Jensen whined pathetically.

“Oh, shut up, I am so in tune. You’re just jealous,” Steve accused.

That point was a given. Steve was still human, which merited all of the jealousy in the world, so Jensen growled at him.

“Dude, she’s perfect,” Steve argued.

Yes. Perfect. They were going to marry and have throaty, smoky voiced children together, and Jensen would spend the rest of his life curled up next to Pongo, the most persistent admirer that Jensen had ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Whatever Jensen liked, Pongo liked. Whatever Jensen disliked, Pongo disliked. Jensen would dislike the dog himself, except for the fact that he worried that the overgrown puppy would just adopt that attitude and start hating himself with dog hate, and Jensen wasn’t going to wish that on the poor animal. After all, he already had to live with being called ‘Pongo.’ Did Jensen really want to add doggy depression to his conscience?

As far as Jensen had been able to make out from the whispered conversations that Steve and Sophia had, Pongo was a special adoption who came with a very hefty donation to the animal rescue group that Sophia ran. His previous owner had given over a lot of money and a distinct order that Pongo was not to ever be neutered.

Then, because Sophia was a responsible dog owner, she’d asked about Jennita’s state of reproductive ability because she didn’t want there to be any litters of puppies. Jensen wished that he could un-hear that conversation entirely, but dog hearing didn’t come with the selective option, no matter what Jensen’s mother’s miniature poodle had led them to believe so many years before.

When Steve had started rambling about Jensen’s poor, malformed doggy whatevers, Pongo had snorted in almost a doggy chuckle. Jensen supposed that the dog’s sense of smell had told him that Jensen wasn’t really a girl, or maybe it had let him know that Jensen wasn’t really a dog. He didn’t spend much time thinking about it. He spent his time wishing that the conversation would just be over instead. Eventually even Steve ran out of words, and Sophia had just squeezed his hand empathetically and told him that she still loved Jennita even if she was a mutant. It was all very not fun, but Sophia never brought up the subject again.

What she did do was decide that Steve was the most awesome person ever, and as much as Jensen vehemently opposed the idea, Steve proposed, married her, and brought her and her gigantic dog home to his apartment.

Of course, the apartment was much too small, so they moved to a townhouse where there was actually space. This should’ve meant that Pongo could quit trying to curl up on the same, very expensive dog bed as Jensen, but it didn’t. No matter what corner of the house Jensen dragged his plush digs to, Pongo was sure to follow with his own, much more worn doggy bed and accompanying doggy throw. It was sort of adorable, like Pongo was some wayward hobo Dalmatian looking for a place to nap, and Jensen inevitably gave in.

After a few months of listening to two earthy voiced people getting it on nigh on constantly, Jensen finally figured out how to turn the television on without the use of fingers. Watching television had never been a problem before Sophia, but whenever she was actually gone, Steve was busy getting caught up on work. And when she was there he was caught up in her, so getting him to flip channels for Jensen was a bit of a challenge.

Pongo, at least, seemed to appreciate Jensen’s cleverness. He quickly learned to bark when Jensen channel surfed over something that he wanted to watch. Jensen grew a sort of fondness for the mutt. He seemed pretty intelligent, and if Jensen was in his human form, he’d probably be scheming how to steal Steve’s bride’s dog away.

Most of the time, they ended up watching sports. Jensen figured that Pongo enjoyed the back and forth motions, and he could forgive him for that one time that he actually seemed to be rooting for the Mavs. He was a dog after all, he could get excited over anything.

Overall, it was a pretty good life as far as a life on four paws went. Then two things happened.

First, Steve sold a song. That wasn’t so unusual in and of itself, but the whole going platinum thing? That was a pretty big deal. “Cruel Devil,” was sung by some whiny, pop star whose voice was processed through fifteen different filters in a sound studio, but it sold copies, and Steve’s royalty paychecks went through the roof.

This brought about occurrence number two. Steve and Sophia decided that they needed better living arrangements.

Goodbye townhome; hello actual house.

Of course, they were living in Los Angeles, so it still wasn’t a great place because nobody normal could afford a great place in LA, but it was close enough. As they were now living in some, as Steve put it, “Sweet Digs,” Sophia had no problem volunteering to bring home a basket full of orphaned Dalmatian puppies.

In Steve’s defense, Sophia hadn’t really talked it through with him first. She was a dog person. She was certain that both Pongo and Jennita were perfect for fostering young puppies. She’d never seen Jensen be aggressive, and Pongo was ‘such a sweetheart’ who was always excited to see a new dog cross his path.

The puppies looked like drowned rats. Pongo whined and butt-wiggled his way across the linoleum of the kitchen floor to poke curiously at them with his big, doggy nose. Their tiny, pink paws batted at the giant, black monstrosity, and even though he was dead set against having anything to do with the puppies, Jensen had to admit that the sight was adorable.

Thankfully Sophia actually knew dogs and didn’t expect Jensen to play mommy or any other sort of foolish nonsense. She fed the little, almost translucent puppies with a bottle. All fifteen of them were suckled and tucked back into the basket with the puppy friendly materials

Jensen got to hear the sad story of their birth when Sophia whispered it to Steve after they had makeup sex for the fight about the puppies. Apparently, the mother was a puppy farm bitch whose system just couldn’t keep up with the demands of having such a large litter in so deplorable of conditions.

It made Jensen’s stomach twist to hear of how they found the puppies and other litters caged up with their sickly mothers. The so-called owner wasn’t admitting to anything, maintaining his innocence and insisting that he was being misrepresented. What made it worse was the fact that the authorities were fairly certain that all of the litters were custom ordered. There were receipts that indicated that all of the puppies were already paid for.

It was sad and depressing, and when Pongo let out a long, mournful whine, Jensen joined right on in.

When Sophia had to go trouble-shoot some problems at one of her organization’s sister shelters, Steve stepped right on up to volunteer to feed the puppies.

While Pongo had let Sophia do her thing the puppies without any fussing, something inside of his little dog brain must’ve told him that Steve was inexperienced, so he watched him like a hawk. It was sort of amusing how Pongo trailed after Steve with a worried crease to his dog brow as Steve bottle fed each puppy and hummed a tune for them.

“How do you feel about charity work, Jense?” Steve asked as he worked on feeding puppy number five.

Jensen grumbled in response. He knew that his friend’s question was leading somewhere that was potentially embarrassing for the both of them.

“It’s just… I was thinking that I could help raise some money for the little guys. I’ve got that new song I’ve been working on, and with your fine dog self being somewhat of a celebrity, I thought you might want to do some work on the music video?” Steve said as he turned towards Jensen with the littlest puppy cradled in his hands, its blind little eyes still closed over, sucking away at the tiny puppy bottle Steve was holding to its mouth.

Pongo barked excitedly at the end of Steve’s sentence, his stupidly long tail wagging with such force that it made his butt shake. He kept looking from Jensen to Steve and whining every time that he looked at Jensen. The barking set the remaining fourteen puppies to whining and yipping with their baby doggy voices.

“Seems your buddy thinks it’s a good idea,” Steve pointed out with that stupid smile that usually made his adoring gaggle of female groupies swoon.

Jensen groaned. The sound was lost in the chaos of other dog noises that were filling the kitchen, so he threw himself down on the floor and covered his dainty, spotted nose with his paws.

“Well, Pongo likes it,” Steve argued as he bent over to pluck up another crying, hungry puppy and put the one he’d been holding back down in with his brothers and sisters.

A growl was the closest thing to telling Steve off about Pongo being an actual dog and how Jensen, as a human, shouldn’t be put on the same level. Steve, being Steve, ignored him. “Come on, it’ll be fun. You love acting. It’ll be great. ‘Red Jar’ is perfect for it.”

Pongo actually yipped like the puppies at the mention of his favorite song, and Jensen sort of hated that Steve was pulling out that particular weapon. The giant Dalmatian had been known to cry for half an hour straight if Steve didn’t go play the song any time it was mentioned. He seemed to think that it was composed specifically for him.

It was quite the headache and all because Steve had been mumbling to himself one late evening after getting home from a gig. He’d been trying to remind himself of what he was attempting to cook for his late night snack going, “Red jar, red jar, jar red. Jarred. Jared? Fuck, do I owe that bastard money?”

And damned if Pongo hadn’t chosen that moment to start licking Steve like it was going out of style. Steve had never been one to need much pressure to pursue doing anything creatively, and the approval of an oversized dog was enough for him to let the song take root in his mind.

“Jar of red, sitting inside my chest, not even beating anymore,” Steve started serenading the latest puppy. Beside him, Pongo started swaying like one of Steve’s groupies. If the dog could hold a lighter, Jensen was fairly certain that he’d be waving it around in the air.

“Jar of red, crying out for you, like a wave upon the shore,” Steve warbled towards Pongo who took that as his cue to croon in his off pitch dog way back.

Jensen left the room to go take a dog nap. If he was going to get roped into doing a music video, he was going to look his best for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When “Jar of Red” went viral within days of release, Jensen discovered that dogs could get groupies. Every time that Steve took him for a walk, girls would come up and ask for their autographs. Because Jensen wasn’t actually a dog, and Steve gave him a disapproving, “Dude,” every time that Jensen didn’t put his paw to a piece of paper, he “signed” a lot of autographs with his paw print.

Sophia thought it was adorable and started keeping an animal friendly ink pad on her when they went for walks.

It was torture for Jensen. He was living his dream, and all that he had to show for it was a lonely existence where his most constant companion was a dog. It was like he was turning into his bachelor uncle, only he had a tail, and he belonged to Steve.

Actually, Jensen’s life was worse than his crazy bachelor uncle’s. It was a horrible thought, but true, and for a few days it bummed Jensen out.

Sophia worried about him and argued with Steve about taking him to the vet. Steve tried to talk to him when his lovely bride wasn’t around, but it wasn’t like Jensen could actually share his worries with his friend. Even if he could, he knew that Steve already knew what the problem was. There wasn’t any man that was going to be content living the life of a dog.

Pongo though, he was a great dog. He constantly tried to cheer Jensen up by coming over to share stolen treats that Sophia didn’t catch him purloining from the kitchen counter, and he would roll over and do all manner of stupid dog tricks to try to cheer Jensen up. And when none of those things worked, he curled up right next to Jensen and refused to move. Every time that Sophia or Steve came by to take Pongo on his walk, he wouldn’t budge from Jensen’s side.

When supper time came for the third day in a row, and Pongo didn’t run to feast upon whatever tasty morsels Sophia tried to tempt him with, Jensen knew that he’d been had. While Sophia worried about Pongo and Jennita’s health and how they could give the puppies something, Jensen knew full well that Pongo was on some sort of doggie hunger strike.

And Jensen couldn’t find it within himself to harm an animal, not even one so clearly devious as Pongo.

He dragged himself out of his doggy bed exile and loped to the kitchen to demand that Steve fill his bowl, and the next thing he knew Pongo’s overly large paws were slapping against the tile, nails scrabbling as the behemoth of a dog almost lost his footing in his haste to get to his dog bowl.

The whole thing should’ve further highlighted the sadness of Jensen’s existence, but Pongo’s exuberance only made him smile. At least, he smiled on the inside. The outside jowls kind of made the smiling thing nigh on impossible for a dog. He honestly didn’t know how Pongo did it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The constant attention from strangers was ultimately what enabled the burglars to get into the house.

Steve and Sophia had gone off to some fund raising event for the evening, and Jensen had been comfortably curled up on their new leather sofa like the very bad dog that he was when Pongo started growling.

Jensen hadn't gotten an instant knowledge of dog speak downloaded into his brain when Kruella did her little magic trick, but he’d learned how to say, “Be quiet,” and summarily told Pongo to shut his yapper, hopefully with an emphasis that translated into, “I’m trying to sleep here,” but he couldn’t be sure about that.

It wasn’t that Jensen hadn’t heard the unfamiliar footsteps stalking around Steve’s house. It was just that he was used to groupies and paparazzi being around at odd hours to either take pictures or dig through Steve and Sophia’s trash in the hopes of finding something worth selling to the gossip rags.

But it must’ve been something that Pongo smelled, because when the door was broken down, he was the one who was already on his feet attacking the strangers. Anybody in their right mind would’ve been terrified to see a dog of Pongo’s size attacking them, but the intruders were either too stupid or too jaded to care because by the time that Jensen made it over to them to sink his own teeth in, Pongo was already out cold on the floor.

Jensen knew that he yelped when they shoved the tranquilizer into him, but whatever it was that they gave him went through his system in seconds because he didn’t remember anything else when he woke up to Pongo’s teeth worrying at his collar some hours later.

Even though Jensen’s eyesight had taken a hit in color identification when he changed, his clarity and distance was fairly good. He could still see enough of the room he was in to know that he was no longer at Steve and Sophia’s house.

The back of his neck was slicked down with Pongo’s spit, and the collar was pressing uncomfortably against Jensen’s throat from the way that the Dalmatian’s teeth kept pulling at it, removing any slack that had been put into it. Jensen tried to pull away, but Pongo growled at him, and the sound was foreign enough for him to still at the noise.

Pongo gave him what would’ve been an apologetic lick before continuing to chew on Jensen’s collar.

Jensen couldn’t see much of the room with the way that Pongo had him sort of pinned in place, but he could certainly hear the cries of the puppies and the rattling of dog cages. If he was hearing things correctly, there were far more than just fifteen puppies being held in the room, and Jensen’s stomach rolled with the ideas of what that might mean.

Suddenly, Pongo tugged almost viscously at Jensen’s collar, and Jensen thought for a moment that maybe he was going to die by strangulation from the family pet before the collar let loose with an audible snap.

Jensen scurried away with his tail tucked between his legs, but when he turned around to face Jared with his teeth bared, he could see the remnants of his dog collar hanging from the metal chain that was stuck into the brick wall. He could see a similar thick, metal restraint that was still clasped on to Pongo’s collar, keeping him in place like a good dog.

The band of leather was far tighter on Pongo’s neck than Sophia ever allowed it to be buckled. With the way that it was cutting into the soft, black and white skin, there was no way that Pongo was going to be able to back out of it.

Pongo whined at him, and Jensen cocked his head to listen. He couldn’t hear much, not even with his dog hearing, but what he could make out were some voices discussing very nasty plans about skinning the puppies to make the latest trend in furs and how they could test out the techniques on the two adults that they’d stolen first. After all, the adult’s fur was too coarse to make nice accessories, but every animal's skin was different when it came to processing it.

What was worse was that Jensen knew the voice that was speaking. Usually, Mr. Deville’s voice wasn’t audible, drowned out as it was by his wife’s nasal and overly perky tones. But tonight was a different story. It seemed his darling wife had struck upon the perfect plan, and domestic animals were so much better for the fur trade than wild, trappable animals. Domestic had instant supply.

It was a minor setback that the one puppy mill had been shut down, but surely they’d be able to find another supplier if the Dalmatian experiment went through.

Jensen didn’t need to hear more. Kruella had turned him into a dog to begin with; he didn’t doubt her and her husband’s ability to carry through with their plans.

There wasn’t much that he could do inside the room, so he went over to start trying to return the favor of chewing through Pongo’s collar because at least he’d have backup then, but the big dog growled at him and lunged, clearly trying to chase Jensen away.

At first, Jensen was confused by the action, but then the door swung open to reveal two thugs who, contrary to what movies would have people believe, immediately noticed that one of the dogs that they had chained to the wall was loose.

Jensen didn’t have any choice but to run. The men were fast, but a dog’s body was good for something, and Jensen was faster. He couldn’t open any doors, but he did manage to get a good lead on them. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that his advantage would work forever, so he tried to evade by heading for the staircase. More guards came up that way, so Jensen turned and darted down another hallway instead. He was in an old mansion, one that was being renovated if the plastic sheeting and temporary scaffolding hanging around was any indication, and he tried to use that to his advantage.

He darted behind some paint pails to avoid an attempt to grab him, but his paws caught on some loose paintbrushes, sending him crashing into one of the scaffoldings and sliding into the room beyond it on the slippery plastic sheeting that came cascading down around him. The sound of things crashing around was loud, and any hope that Jensen had of escaping the notice of all of the crooks instead of just some of them came tumbling to the ground.

When he struggled back to his feet to try to make another escape attempt, it was a tossup as to whether he or the thugs were more surprised when he stood up human.

Human and in full possession of his junk, which was flapping in the breeze of the drafty mansion.

It wasn’t easy tackling an armed criminal while buck naked, but Jensen had adrenaline and tons of fear on his side and somehow managed to wrangle away the man’s gun and make a break for it by randomly shooting at anyone who came near.

Thankfully even in Hollywood, a naked man running around in the middle of the night shooting a gun was a rare sight, and the police were called.

Jensen made the front page of every news magazine and hit all the major television stations that night as Kruella and her husband were arrested for his abduction. The press had a field day with it, and given what the Devilles had actually done to him and had been planning to do with all of the puppies that they had both purchased and stolen, Jensen didn’t feel bad for them.

He went into seclusion to avoid all of the media attention. Even though there wasn’t a whole lot of hard evidence to prove that he had been held hostage in their multi-million dollar mansion, there was enough to get the Devilles some serious jail time and finally take Kruella’s godforsaken show off the air. Jensen’s testimony was going to be a part of that, and there was no way that he was going to have any peace from reporters if he tried being a regular person.

The police were busy investigating, “several other leads,” that were found on other abduction cases that might be related to the Devilles, and Jensen had the unpleasant feeling that maybe he was one of the lucky ones. Only God knew how many people that Kruella had worked that magic spell on.

Steve called to say that they’d gotten Pongo and the puppies back, and they were doing fine even though Pongo was, “Seriously bummed out without you around, man.”

Finally, when the shine wore off, the press started covering something other than the Deville arrest, and Jensen started to come out of seclusion. One of his first outings was to go visit Steve and introduce himself as himself to Sophia. Officially ‘Jennita’ was still missing, and it was unknown if the dognappers had simply disposed of her or if she had run away during the break-in, but there was a miniature shrine dedicated to ‘her’ outside of Steve’s front gate from ‘her’ fans that sort of made Jensen sad.

He was a great actor and well-loved, at least by a few crazies.

Sophia might have been the one to answer the door when Jensen knocked, but it was Pongo who greeted him. The giant dog practically leapt into his arms and refused to leave Jensen’s side for the entire visit. When Jensen left that evening, it was to the sound of mournful howling.

Steve and Sophia made it three days before they called Jensen and begged him to come take their dog. Pongo was doing worse than hunger striking. He was whining and crying and barking at all hours of the night. He would curl up in Jensen’s old doggy bed with Jensen’s old blanket and refuse to budge.

Finally, Jensen came and got him, thankful for the anonymous donation that had put him up in a secure apartment that would allow him to have pets. Getting a job when everybody knew your face for the wrong reasons wasn’t a fun thing, and Jensen didn’t need extra hassle.

With a court trial still looming in front of him, Jensen couldn’t even sell the story rights to a publisher, and he certainly wasn’t going to get cast in anything as an actor. He had the time to take care of Pongo, and was also at home the day the police department detective came by with a box of Jensen’s things that they had determined to not be necessary to the court case.

The fact that the Devilles had anything of his at all surprised Jensen and creeped him out a little, but that feeling got pushed away momentarily when his fingers rolled over an object that wasn’t his. The urn was small and made out of dark blue porcelain. The lid was screwed on at the top with silver threading, and Jensen would’ve been tempted to call it pretty except for the sparkling dust that was clinging to the outside glaze of the pot. There was a crack in the top of the lid that was letting through a small amount of the substance, but it didn’t appear to be significant, and Jensen was glad for that.

He knew that particular glisten, but before he could get the cursed thing as far away from him as possible, he got jumped by Pongo for the third time in his life. The little jar went flying and crashed into the apartment wall. Its sides shattered at the impact, and Jensen’s carpeting was rained down upon by pottery fragments and disturbingly sparkly dust - which was nothing compared to the very tall and very naked man with a dog collar around his neck currently sprawled across Jensen’s lap.

“What the hell?” Jensen squawked as he shoved the man off.

“Hey,” the man said sheepishly as he covered his groin with a gigantic paw – hand.

“You… You’re a-a…” Jensen stuttered.

“Um, yeah? I mean, you didn’t know?” Pongo asked, tilting his head to the side in a way that Jensen recalled the big Dalmatian doing hundreds of times before.

“No,” Jensen said slowly.

“But, I mean, you had to have smelled that I was different. I knew right away with you and… Well, I guess it makes sense now why you didn’t tell Steve all about me once you switched back and why you left me alone like that. I thought you just didn’t like me or were freaked or something.”

Jensen stared blankly at the man. “I’m freaked right now if it helps.”

“I can see that,” Pongo said with a tiny grin.

“I’m guessing your name isn’t, uh, Pongo?” Jensen hazarded.

“Jared,” the man said as he extended his hand for Jensen to shake then quickly placed it back over his lap to cover himself. “Sorry,” he added with another tiny grin.

“Right, Jared,” Jensen said with a jerky nod back. “So what did you do to them that they whammied you?”

“I designed all of Mr. Deville’s clothing for him? I was, uh, kind of homeless and drawing dress patterns on sidewalks, and he found me. And it was great for a while, he paid me some money, and I got to stay in his house and draw. He had a couple of show dogs that I could play with, and I was pretty happy. But then Kruella came along, and his career skyrocketed, and soon my designs were being sold for a lot of money. I guess that they got nervous. He started demanding that I have a backlog of projects, and when I finally objected and pointed out that he was basically stealing my designs, I kind of got dog-i-fied.”

“And now I let the genie dust out of the bottle, and you’re human again?” Jensen asked dubiously.

“No need to sound doubtful, Jensen. The same thing happened to you,” Jared pointed out.

“That’s how I changed back? Dust came out of a bottle?”

“Technically I think that it’s sand, and I think it came from a gypsy not a genie, but the idea is the same,” Jared corrected with a little smile.

“Great. So is there anybody you need to call?” Jensen asked.

“Well I’d guess that maybe you should call Steve and let him know so that he can pass along Pongo’s early passing to Sophia, but I was homeless, man. There’s nobody looking for me. Sadly enough, the best times that I’ve had in the past few years were in that house with them.”

“What about the cops? What the Devilles did to you…”

“What they did to me was horrible, yeah. But I’ve had a long time to think about it. You’re somebody, Jensen. I’m nobody, and I don’t want my name to be made as that poor guy who was taken advantage of because then I’ll never be anything else. I’ve spent enough time being nothing, and there are better ways to get restitution,” Jared told him.

“You’re very calm about this,” Jensen noted.

“Like I said, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Been a dog longer than you, you know? And besides, I might have an idea of what it is that I do want to do, and I think that I know the one I want to do it with.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once upon a time, Jensen Ackles didn’t bark.

He didn’t roll around on grassy fields or hold tiny puppies in his arms or generally embarrass himself by taking care of a gaggle of abandoned and abused Dalmatians, but that was once upon a time.

Now, he lived in a house that overlooked an acre’s worth of land that was completely fenced in and littered with dog toys. Jared insisted on calling it The Dalmatian Plantation even though they had long ago adopted out most of the puppies that had been rescued from the Devilles.

It was a harebrained idea, but between Jensen’s notoriety and the settlement from his civil suit, he had enough money to buy the property and start up Jared’s dog based charity.

Jared designed almost everything, and with Jensen as the oh-so photogenic spokesperson and the addition of adorable animals, the center took off.

And when Jared decided to pounce on Jensen for the fourth time in his life? He was barking up the right tree.


End file.
